No 2 (2019)

The paper considers the main problems of application of incentive norms in relation to a briber in the context of latest legislative changes, the problems of legislative regulation of incentive norms in bribery control according to the draft of a new Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia. Criminal-legal significance of incentive norms in bribery control has not been fully studied in Armenian law of substance. Armenian and foreign scientific literature studied some issues related to the topic of the research but they have sporadic character and do not contain system solutions for current issues. Thus, no systematic study was conducted on the influence of the incentive norms institute in bribery control which would take into account Armenian legislation and law enforcement practice. Consequently, in the conditions of criminal law development, new legal relations and law enforcement practices formation, and criminal law science development, the objective demand for a comprehensive study of the criminal-legal significance of the incentive norms in bribery control arises. The paper provides the scientifically-based recommendations on the improvement of current legislation, official regulatory legal acts and the practice of applying the incentive norms in relation to a briber and a bribery mediator. Based on the study of both the current Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia and the draft of a new Criminal Code of the Republic of Armenia, comparative-legal research of criminal legislation of some foreign countries, as well as the theoretical views on this issue, the author attempted to carry out the comprehensive study of criminal law relations arising when applying the incentive rules in bribery control.

Based on the established common law, current legislation including the orders and decisions of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts of the Russian Federation on the issues of compensation of damage caused by an accident to an employee, the paper considers the possibility of legislative consolidation of the principle of wage loss indemnity in full and not as a percentage of the established disablement. The author highlights that the employer is responsible for the employee’s personal work injury, and this harm should be compensated in full and not in any part (from whatever it was). An employee has the full right to compensation for damage not covered by the insurance, and the author proposes to fix it in the official explanations sent to the courts. The author points out that it will help to prevent violation of rights of employees who have suffered an accident and who, for the most part, are deprived of further opportunity to work, and will lead to uniformity of judicial practice on this issue as well. The author notes that while solving the issue of compensation for moral harm from a production accident, the parties (employer and employee) should agree on a pre-trial basis, without going to a court and choosing as a remedy to appeal to a court only in exceptional cases. The author proposes to introduce the responsibility for unlawful refusal to pay moral compensation in the pre-trial order, as well as the minimum compensation limits depending on the degree of disability and the assessed group of disability. Moreover, the paper emphasizes the importance of court’s assessment of all considerable circumstances of a case, including the employer’s fault in the accident, the volume, and depth of physical and moral suffering of an employee, as well as the employee’s labor merits and values.

Today, the issue of transfer of heat and water supply and water disposal facilities to economic entities is relevant. It is no secret that local government bodies often transfer such kind of municipal property without organizing and conducting the bidding procedure. Some municipalities run competitive procedures which result in a lease agreement. However, the conclusion of such a contract is not always legitimate due to the large deterioration of utilities. The conclusion of a concession agreement will be legal here. The paper covers the issues of legal regulation of transfer of possession and utilization of heat and water supply and water disposal facilities being the municipal property and the conditions for concession agreements conclusion when transferring and utilizing heat and water supply and water disposal facilities. The author addresses the issues of failure of local authorities to comply with the norms of Federal legislation governing the transfer of municipal property, as well as the issues of conclusion by local authorities of the agreements for leasing of heat and water supply facilities put into operation more than 5 years ago in violation of the current legislation. The paper explains the cases when it is necessary to hold an auction and in what cases the lease agreements and gratuitous use agreements concerning the state or municipal property should be concluded without carrying out competitions (auctions). Moreover, the author gives the explanations on application of the antimonopoly legislation when concluding the concession agreements towards the objects of heat supply, centralized systems of hot water supply, cold water supply and (or) water disposal, and separate objects of such systems according to the provisions of Federal law dated the 03.07.2016 No. 275-FZ “On amendments to Federal law “On concession agreements”.

The urgency of the research is caused by the imperfection of federal legislation regarding local self-government. The paper reviews the recall of an elected official of local self-government as a type of responsibility of an official and a form of public participation in the decision on the matters of local significance. The possibility to influence administrative matters in a municipal entity is the basic idea of local self-government implementation. The absence of mechanisms of influence on the elected officials or the imperfection of such mechanisms reduces the possibilities of civil society and makes public participation fragmentary. The recall as an evaluation category provides a feedback with public. The aim of the paper is the analysis of the reasons and legal nature of the recall of an elected official. The legal regulation of the recall has the polemical character and has a number of deficiencies. The reasons for application of the recall of an elected official and the existing procedure do not allow making a definite conclusion about the nature of the recall as a type of responsibility of an elected official. The paper analyzes the recall in comparison with the impeachment of an official. The restricted approach of the legislator limits the use of this form of public participation in the decision on the matters of local significance by the local community. This generally reduces the possibilities of public influence on the activity of the officials. In practice, the imperfection of the legislation does not allow the population to recall an official who is not able to deal with the administrative matters or makes decisions not meeting the interests of local community. It is necessary to change the concept of the recall of an official. The paper formulates the proposals on the changes to legislation.

The paper deals with the problem of correlation of key concepts of criminal procedure - “legal rights” and “authoritative powers”. The authors establish that today, the legal definitions of these concepts are missing and the doctrinal interpretations do not solve the problem of their ambiguity and consequently the problem of different interpretation both in the procedural science theory and in legal precedents. It is shown that in the frame of criminal procedure, the right of any party to the criminal process should be legally provided due to the domination of the mandatory method of legal regulation. In the context of distinction of the concepts under consideration, the authors give attention to the different legal natures of the discretionary and mandatory powers. The authors emphasize that in science, the conventional point of view about the inseparability of legal rights and corresponding obligations of other parties within a certain legal relationship exists. However, the paper justifies the conclusion that such relation in respect to the criminal procedure authorities is not so evident. Such an approach is exactly valid for the mandatory powers and for the part of discretionary powers but for those where the law allows the active variant of their implementation only - through the actions but not nonperformance. Reasoning from this fact, the authors consider the authoritative criminal-procedural powers as a particular case of legal rights having, however, a number of essential peculiar features. The paper shows as well that, according to the general rule, it is prohibited to consider the concept “powers” as an ordinary collection of rights and obligations because the rights and obligations in respect of authoritative empowered parties are often an integral whole and compose a continuous system.